A webinar that transfers information isn't a webinar

I spent several years coaching executives at IBM on how to present, and the same conversation came up more often than any other.

Someone would come off stage or out of a rehearsal genuinely pleased. It went well. Good questions, good energy, people stayed to the end.

And I would ask one question. What do you want them to do now?

Most of the time there was a pause. Not because the answer was bad, but because it had never been the point. The presentation had been built to cover the material. Coverage was the goal, and coverage had been achieved.

That is a lecture. It might be a very good lecture. It is not a presentation, and it is certainly not a webinar that produces revenue.

Teaching and persuading are not the same job

A teacher succeeds when the audience understands. A presenter succeeds when the audience moves.

Those two goals look similar from the outside and they pull in opposite directions the moment you start building slides. Understanding wants completeness. Movement wants focus. If you optimise for understanding, you will add the caveat, the second example, the appendix, the bit about the exception. Every one of those additions makes the material more correct and the outcome less likely.

I have done this to myself plenty of times. I have taken a room that was leaning in and flattened it entirely by being too generous with information. You can watch it happen. You can see the point where interest turns into note-taking and note-taking turns into checking the phone.

Two things go wrong when you give too much.

The first is overload. The audience feels like they have been sprayed with a fire hose, and a confused mind does nothing. Doing nothing is always the safest available option, so that is what they choose.

The second is worse. You have given them enough to believe they can do it themselves. They cannot, and they will not, and they will not come back to tell you. You have converted a prospect into a reader.

The one thing test

Before you build anything, answer three questions in writing.

What is the one idea I want them to hold on to?

What is the one shift in how they see their situation that makes the next step obvious?

What is the one action I am asking for?

Not three ideas. One. If you cannot reduce it to one, you are not ready to present, you are still thinking.

Everything in the presentation then has to earn its place against that single idea. If a slide does not advance it, cut the slide. If a story does not make the shift more vivid, cut the story, however much you like it. This is the hardest part and it is where nearly everyone flinches, because cutting good material feels like waste.

It is not waste. It is the job.

Enough, not everything

There is a level of information that produces movement, and it sits well below the level that satisfies your instinct to be thorough.

You need to give enough that they believe you understand their situation better than they do. You need to give enough that they get one genuine insight, something they can use tomorrow whether or not they ever speak to you. That insight is what buys you the right to ask for the next step.

What you do not need to give is the full method. The method is what they are buying. Showing them the map and the terrain is generous. Walking them the whole route for free is not generosity, it is a failure to understand what you are actually there to do.

Design backwards

The most useful discipline I know is to build the presentation in reverse.

Start with the moment after the slides close. What is the person doing? Booking something, replying to something, raising their hand, agreeing to a next conversation. Write that down first.

Then work backwards. What do they have to believe to do that? What do they have to see about their own situation to believe it? What is the one idea that makes them see it?

Now you have your structure, and it will be considerably shorter than the one you would have built forwards.

The only measure that matters

Not the attendance number. Not the completion rate. Not the compliments in the chat, which are pleasant and mean almost nothing.

Did anything change?

If people came, enjoyed it, thanked you, and their situation is identical a week later, the presentation did not work. It was an event, not a mechanism.

The test is uncomfortable because it is binary and it leaves nowhere to hide. That is precisely why it is worth using.